Government Files is The Canada Report's public-records analysis series examining government documents obtained through Canada's Access to Information (ATI) and provincial Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. These transparency laws allow members of the public to request internal government records from federal and provincial institutions. This article reviews documents released through those processes and summarizes what the records contain and what they show. While we strive for accuracy, this article represents an analysis and interpretation of the source material. For complete accuracy and full context, readers should review the original documents, which are available in full below.
Full Document
The complete document is available for download below:
A single American-owned staffing firm captured more than a third of the National Research Council's information technology contracting over the past five years. Records released under the Access to Information Act show TEKsystems Canada was awarded 16 contracts worth $29.75 million between January 2021 and April 2026 — 36.2 per cent of the $82.16 million the agency committed across 74 contracts in that period. That is more than the 22 smallest suppliers on the list received combined.
The records were released by the National Research Council of Canada in response to a request for all contracts awarded under two federal procurement vehicles — Task-Based Informatics Professional Services (TBIPS) and Solutions-Based Informatics Professional Services (SBIPS) — covering 1 January 2021 to 6 May 2026. The release takes the form of a contract register listing vendor, award date, total contract value, resource category, contracting authority, and required security clearance for each award.
What the Documents Show
Across the five-year window, the National Research Council committed $82,157,190 to outside IT professionals. The average contract was worth $1.11 million. Seventy of the 74 awards ran through TBIPS, the federal vehicle used to bring in individual technical specialists on a task basis. Only four went through SBIPS, which is designed for outcome-based project delivery rather than staffing. In dollar terms the split is even starker: $80.5 million through task-based staffing against $1.66 million through solutions-based contracting.
Spending did not taper. The agency awarded $15.59 million in 2021, $21.88 million in 2022, $16.23 million in 2023, $8.9 million in 2024, and $18.55 million in 2025. The 2026 figure of $1.02 million reflects only the first four months of the year, as the records end with an award dated 13 April 2026.
The concentration at the top of the vendor list is pronounced. Behind TEKsystems, Cistel Technology holds $10.55 million across six contracts and Like 10 Inc. holds $6.04 million across four. Those three firms together account for 56.4 per cent of all spending. The top five vendors hold 67.4 per cent, and the top ten hold 88.6 per cent. Twenty-six firms appear in the register, but 14 of them received a single contract each, and the bottom 13 vendors share just 5.6 per cent of the money between them.
The distribution is similarly weighted at the contract level. Eleven awards worth $3 million or more account for $40.2 million — 48.9 per cent of everything spent. At the other end, 32 contracts worth under $500,000 account for just 7.5 per cent. The register documents a small number of very large staffing agreements sitting alongside a long tail of minor ones.
Want future Government Files like this?
We release new Canadian public-records breakdowns weekly.
The $3.75-Million Ceiling
The most striking pattern in the register is not who won the work but where the largest contracts stop. Ten separate awards fall between $3,549,939.58 and $3,749,477.31 — a spread of just $199,537 across contracts issued to six different companies over four years. Those ten contracts alone account for 45 per cent of all spending in the release.
The clustering is tight enough to be visible at a glance. Kyndryl Canada's January 2023 award came in at $3,749,477.31. TEKsystems' October 2022 award was $3,745,521.04. Its May 2024 award was $3,728,377.26 and its June 2024 award $3,743,429.90, while an August 2023 pair landed at $3,729,012.70 and $3,737,481.94. Adirondack Information Management's March 2025 contract came to $3,647,753.00, and Cistel Technology's April 2023 award to $3,640,356.01.
Contract values landing this consistently just beneath a round figure are the signature of an approval threshold — a dollar ceiling above which an award requires a higher level of sign-off, a competitive process, or ministerial attention. The records do not state that such a threshold exists, name a figure, or explain the pattern. What they establish is the pattern itself: when the National Research Council writes a large IT staffing contract, it writes one worth roughly $3.7 million, and it does so repeatedly. Readers interested in how dollar thresholds shape federal contracting may recall Ottawa's Buy Canadian policy for contracts above $25 million, which applies a separate set of rules once an award crosses that line.
What the Agency Was Buying
The resource categories name the roles being filled. Seventeen contracts worth $40.37 million are bundled multi-category awards covering several roles at once — business analysts, technical architects, enterprise architects, project executives and security specialists under a single agreement. Among single-category awards, programmer analysts dominate at nine contracts worth $11.19 million, followed by platform analysts at $4.62 million and business analysts at $4.13 million.
These are core technical positions rather than specialised short-term expertise. The register documents an organisation contracting for programmers, testers, system administrators, technical writers and help desk staff on multi-year agreements, with most contracts carrying option years that extend well past their initial term. A number run for two years with two to four option years attached, giving several of these arrangements a potential life of six years.
Security requirements were modest. Of the 74 contracts, 71 required only Reliability Status, the baseline federal clearance. Three called for Secret status: two awards to Mindwire Systems in May 2021 and October 2023 covering IT security threat and risk assessment, and one to TEKsystems in March 2025 for a system administrator. For an agency that houses federal scientific research, the records show the overwhelming majority of contracted IT work was performed at the lowest clearance tier.
The Zero-Dollar Entries
Five contracts in the register carry values that do not appear to reflect real money. Two TEKsystems awards for technical architect resources, dated 24 May 2024 and 19 June 2024, are recorded at $0.00. A Mindwire Systems technical writer contract dated 2 June 2025 is also listed at $0.00. Two further awards — to Experis Canada on 1 April 2026 and Adirondack Information Management on 9 April 2026 — are each recorded at $1.13.
The records offer no explanation for these figures. They may represent cancelled awards, contracts amended to zero, placeholder entries, or a data-entry convention within the agency's contracting system. Whatever the cause, five of the 74 rows in a contract register released under access-to-information law contain values that cannot be taken at face value, and the release contains nothing that would allow a reader to interpret them.
What's Missing from the Records
The release is a register, not a file. It records what was awarded and to whom, but not why. There is no indication of how many individual contractors each agreement supplied, what daily or hourly rates were paid, whether the option years were exercised, or how much of each contract's ceiling value was ultimately spent. The total of $82.16 million represents contracted value, which in federal staffing arrangements is frequently higher than final expenditure.
Nothing in the documents explains the concentration. The records do not show how many firms bid on each requirement, whether awards were competed or issued under a supply arrangement's call-up provisions, or what evaluation produced the outcome. TBIPS and SBIPS are pre-qualified vehicles, which means the pool of eligible suppliers was established before any of these awards — but the register does not indicate how the winner was selected from that pool in any individual case.
There is also a three-week gap at the end. The request sought contracts through 6 May 2026, and the final award in the release is dated 13 April 2026. The most likely explanation is simply that no contracts were awarded in the intervening weeks, but the records do not say so.
The Broader Context
Federal reliance on outside IT contractors has drawn sustained scrutiny in recent years, particularly following parliamentary examination of consulting arrangements and the costs attached to them. The National Research Council register is a narrow window on that pattern: a single agency, two procurement vehicles, five years, and a clear picture of money flowing steadily to a small group of staffing firms for roles — programmer, tester, business analyst, system administrator — that sit close to the core of an organisation's technical operations.
The timing gives the numbers additional weight. Federal departments are planning to cut roughly 12,000 public service jobs by 2026-27, even as records like these show agencies committing tens of millions to contracted technical staff over multi-year terms. The National Research Council's spending did not decline across the period covered; its 2025 total was higher than 2023 or 2024. Similar procurement questions surfaced in ATI records covering Ottawa's development of the CanChat AI system, where the government simultaneously built internal capacity and established new frameworks for buying technology from outside vendors.
Support Public-Records Analysis
This analysis is based on government records released under access-to-information laws. If this breakdown was useful, you can support future Government Files work with a one-time tip.
Support Government FilesAll figures referenced are from the National Research Council of Canada, request AI-2026-34 (copy of A-2026-11), obtained through Access to Information requests. The records consist of a contract register listing 74 TBIPS and SBIPS awards made between 1 January 2021 and 13 April 2026, including vendor name, award date, total contract value, resource category, contract length, contracting authority and required security clearance.
